I spent yesterday visiting my favourite haunts where no ghosts but memories lurk. I have about three days to cram as much visiting my favourite places into as I can before the real business of this trip begins. I dragged Loch with me, not exactly kicking and screaming, around a few shopping outlets. Shopping outlet is a word I use loosely to describe the places we went. One was an old market that has heaps of little shops set in a courtyard type of an arrangement. The two were malls that will rival anything in New Zealand.
The point is not to spend money. Wherever I go in this city each place has an ambience to experience whatever that means. It may just mean I like observing people as they do life in a culture very different but similar to my own. We travel by cycle rickshaw which in itself is entertaining. There is plenty to see on the way. Mothers sitting in groups on the footpath waiting for children to finish school. People buying. People selling. People negotiating traffic. It is a bit like watching a movie and being part of it at the same time.
In between the second and third mall, for something completely different, Loch took a team with her and visited her street people. I tagged along too. These are the people who live alongside the street and Loch has worked with for the past 20 years. I am fairly sure these are the same group of people I prayed for in 1995 and asked God to send someone who would tell them about Jesus.
The children now second generation of the ones Loch first started working with, come to a day centre she runs. Some of the girls she has taken into her home and some of the boys live in another house down the street. Many of them, although they do not exist in terms of officialdom, have been enrolled in school with the help of some fancy paperwork from a lawyer. If you do not officially exist because no-one registered your birth, you can not go to school or have a bank account.
I made myself scarce while this was going on in a café on the street. It is possible to drink coffee and pray for people ministering on the street you know. I did not stay in the café long enough though so I too mooched around the footpath in what essentially is someone's living room. It always feels a little weird to be parked up talking to people, with their belongings not far away on the road side of the street. Meanwhile the people who have walled in houses walk through the narrow gap between there and the shops staring as they make their way home to comfort and safety.
There is something inextricably intoxicating about being on the street in Hephzibah. The huge variety of people, sights, sounds and smells makes a visual, dynamic entertainment feast. It is also quite exhausting as a cacophony of stimuli crash over you.
Several trams bumbled and clanged their way up the street as I waited. That will be tomorrows treat.
The point is not to spend money. Wherever I go in this city each place has an ambience to experience whatever that means. It may just mean I like observing people as they do life in a culture very different but similar to my own. We travel by cycle rickshaw which in itself is entertaining. There is plenty to see on the way. Mothers sitting in groups on the footpath waiting for children to finish school. People buying. People selling. People negotiating traffic. It is a bit like watching a movie and being part of it at the same time.
In between the second and third mall, for something completely different, Loch took a team with her and visited her street people. I tagged along too. These are the people who live alongside the street and Loch has worked with for the past 20 years. I am fairly sure these are the same group of people I prayed for in 1995 and asked God to send someone who would tell them about Jesus.
The children now second generation of the ones Loch first started working with, come to a day centre she runs. Some of the girls she has taken into her home and some of the boys live in another house down the street. Many of them, although they do not exist in terms of officialdom, have been enrolled in school with the help of some fancy paperwork from a lawyer. If you do not officially exist because no-one registered your birth, you can not go to school or have a bank account.
I made myself scarce while this was going on in a café on the street. It is possible to drink coffee and pray for people ministering on the street you know. I did not stay in the café long enough though so I too mooched around the footpath in what essentially is someone's living room. It always feels a little weird to be parked up talking to people, with their belongings not far away on the road side of the street. Meanwhile the people who have walled in houses walk through the narrow gap between there and the shops staring as they make their way home to comfort and safety.
There is something inextricably intoxicating about being on the street in Hephzibah. The huge variety of people, sights, sounds and smells makes a visual, dynamic entertainment feast. It is also quite exhausting as a cacophony of stimuli crash over you.
Several trams bumbled and clanged their way up the street as I waited. That will be tomorrows treat.
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